When washing clothes, consumers often want the fabric to come out looking clean and feeling soft. Conventional detergents may provide desirable stain removal and whiteness benefits, but washed fabrics typically lack the “soft feel” benefits that consumers enjoy. Fabric softeners are known to deliver soft feel through the rinse cycle, but fabric softener actives can build up on fabrics over time and lead to whiteness negatives. Furthermore, detergents and fabric softeners are often sold as two different products, making them inconvenient to store, transport, and use. Therefore, it would be beneficial to formulate a single product that provides both cleaning and softness benefits.
However, formulating such compositions is a challenge to the detergent manufacturer. For example, simply adding silicone, a common softness benefit agent, to a conventional detergent is often ineffective, as much of the silicone tends to be carried away in the wash water rather than deposit onto the target fabric. Furthermore, silicone can attract soils as it deposits onto fabrics, so increasing the levels of silicone in a detergent can negatively impact whiteness maintenance and/or stain removal.
Adding known cleaning adjuncts, such as alkoxylated polyalkyleneimines or other polymeric dispersants, may help to mitigate but do not prevent the whiteness and/or stain removal losses associated with silicones. Furthermore, silicone is typically a hydrophobic material, and cleaning adjuncts that remove hydrophobic soils may inhibit deposition of the hydrophobic silicone. Additionally, some cleaning adjuncts that are effective on hydrophobic soils may be incompatible with other detergent adjuncts.
A need, therefore, remains for a fabric care composition that provides benefits related to softness, whiteness maintenance, and stain removal, particularly on fabrics soiled with hydrophobic (e.g., greasy) stains.